208 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



Perhaps you may think I state it rather strongly, but I 

 believe I can raise a bushel of grapes as cheaply as I can a 

 bushel of potatoes : I have no doubt about it. In the first 

 place, it is no drain upon the farm for manure, after the first 

 start. I have two acres back of my house on the hill, which 

 some gentlemen here have seen, which was an old pine plain 

 when I was a boy. Ten years ago, the land would not have 

 brought ten dollars an acre, after the wood was off, and it had 

 run up to birches and a few sapling pines. I cut off the trees 

 and planted that piece with grapes, without the addition, mind 

 you, of any manure at all. I have never put any manure there 

 since, and yet I get all the growth I want. I would not have 

 you understand by that that it is not necessary to manure 

 grapes : I think it is often necessary to do it ; but while I can 

 grow all the wood I want, why should I manure ? I cannot 

 see any reason. When I begin to see the want of manure, 

 then I am going to put it there ; but while I can grow all the 

 wood I want, and get all the fruit I want off of those vines, 

 why should I put manure on ? I might perhaps say further, 

 that I have grown grapes to some extent, simply for the reason 

 that they do not require manure. It is a constant drain upon 

 the rest of the farm to raise any fruit that needs manure. As 

 to the quantity of grapes which may be raised to the acre, I 

 should say, without stating it high, that the grape runs all the 

 way from two to five tons to the acre. I have seen at the 

 rate of nearly ten tons to the acre raised, but from two to five 

 tons I think would be reckoned a fair crop. 



Question. What will they be worth ? 



Mr. Mooke. You might just as well ask me what potatoes 

 will be worth next year. It is a hard question to answer. 

 This year, the price has been lower than ever before, and that 

 not because of a surplus of grapes, but from the fact that there 

 were spoiled grapes in some locations, and those spoiled grapes 

 were put into the market, and the market broke down. Every 

 farmer knows that if the market once breaks down, it is 

 pretty hard to get it up again that year ; and more so with 

 grapes than potatoes, because grapes are considered a luxury : 

 buyers will continue to buy if they get good fruit, but let them 

 get poor fruit, and they drop off, and the demand lessens. I 

 have averaged seven or eight cents a pound — that is all. But 



